


after you give the orders you become a voyeur

by disdonc (orphan_account)



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-18
Updated: 2014-07-18
Packaged: 2018-02-09 08:59:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1976898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/disdonc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another day at the office for Victoria Hand. Co-ordinating a mission, sending people into danger and then having to stand at the sidelines while everything goes down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	after you give the orders you become a voyeur

Victoria hand sweeps into the command room, a swirl of analysts and senior agents bobbing in her wake. She strides past the banks of terminals, her ears picking out relevant details from the din.

“Extraction team in staging area. They are good to go.”

“Support Team in place. They are good to go.”

“Sniper Team in place. Good to go.”

Agent Sitwell hands her a headset as she comes to a halt beside him. “Ready to go live on your mark, Agent Hand.”

“Are the satellites in place?” she asks. She regrets leaving her tumbler of coffee sitting on her desk and is half tempted to send someone for it. But she needs everyone focused and it’s probably cold anyhow. She hadn’t touched it in an hour and she hates cold coffee.

“Bring up Satellite Carter Four. Right monitor,” says Sitwell. The screen flickers alive and displays a compound with several concrete buildings. It’s night and although it’s winter in that hemisphere there’s no snow on the ground. The grass in the fields surrounding the compound looks grey in the moonlight, dead. 

She sets her jaw against the throbbing in her head that’s been fighting to rise up all morning.

“Do we have a go, boss? I don’t want to pay these yahoos overtime.” She hears Marshall’s calm, easy drawl over the comm system and smiles, a dollop of the tension easing away. From back in their field days, talking to Agent Marshall for Hand had been like stepping into the shade on a hot day. Outside of the field, she’d never once seen the man walk at a pace faster than an easy saunter. She was glad he was on the mission this time.

“You have your go, Agent Marshall. And Agent,” she adds, “be safe.”

“We’ll lose comm once we’re inside the building.”

“I know.”

“Our wheels all sorted?”

An analyst says, “Two kilometres down the road. Two jeeps hidden in a copse of trees. A chopper is waiting immediately over the border but you’ll have to get there safely on your own.”

“So the usual.” asks Marshall. He sounds like he’s talking about where to go for lunch.

“Thermal satellite shows two guards in the tower, two on patrol,” says Sitwell. He removes his glasses and cleans them on a handkerchief before returning them to his nose.

“One guard on patrol,” says Hand, “The other heat signature is a dog.”

“Sniper team, what can you do for us?” Marshall’s voice.

Two pops are heard through the headset and the heat signatures in the tower immediately begin to fade.

“Leave the dog be,” says Victoria.

“Ma’am,” says a voice. Agent Sinclair; she’s someone else she’d hand-picked for this mission. There’s another pop.

“We’re going in,” says Marshall. Same voice as when he’d ask the waitress for another beer when they’d got a for a beers off duty. Figures move across the satellite display. The orange-red blobs pause before one of the concrete bunkers for a moment. The sound of the explosion that follows is automatically dampened by the software controlling communications system.

“Heading inside,” says Marshall. There is a burst of static before the Extraction Team’s comm goes dead.

Victoria balls her hands into fists.

“The intel is solid,” says Sitwell, “I have complete faith in Garrett and his team.”

She grunts. Solid. Three months out of date and extracted under duress in the basement of an abandoned factory in Bucharest. Completely solid.

The minutes tick out like a dripping faucet. Hand stands in front of the view screens chewing the inside of her cheek. The other teams report in ‘holding steady’ exactly as per protocol. Three months of planning. Three months of meetings, mocking the operation in training sessions, haggling for resources.

She lets out a long, slow breath and has just unclenched her jaw when a burst of small-arms fire makes the entire room jump.

“HQ, we’ve taking fire! We -- motherfucker!” Agent Sinclair grunts with pain.

Sitwell gestures toward the satellite image. “Zoom out. There. I see five figures about four hundred metres south of Sniper Team’s position.”

More staccato pops and swearing from Agent Sinclair and some louder gunshots; her team returning fire.

“Where the hell did they come from,” asks Hand to no one in particular.

“There was nothing to indicate anyone going to the site. Resupplies are Thursdays--” Sitwell is cut off by Sinclair strained voice.

“It’s hot over here, HQ,” she says. “Agent Hyde is down but breathing I think.”

“Support Team moving to engage hostiles,” says Agent Hamm, the team’s leader, over the comm.

“Support Team will keep its asses right where they are,” snapes Agent Hand.

“Ma’am with all due respect I --”

“If the Extraction Team comes out hot they’ll need you guys in place,” she takes a deep breath. “The asset is our top priority.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the leader of the Support Team says stiffly.

“Agent Sinclair I’m afraid you’re on your own until the Extraction Team exits.”

“Acknowledged,” responds Agent Sinclair, “We’ll keep ‘em busy for you guys.”

Sinclair. She’d been one of Victoria Hand’s field operatives for a few months now. Hand hardly even admitted it to herself but when Sinclair was at the Hub...the food in the cafeteria tasted just a little bit less bland. She’d even booked an extra mission briefing or two that were probably not strictly speaking necessary. She shook her head. Focus, Hand, what the hell.

Several more bursts of small arms fire over the comm system.

“What’s that?” says one of the nearby analysts.

Agent Hand is about to ask what he means when she hears it too. A whistling sound coming over the comm. 

“Agent Sinclair get--”

Even with the software compensating with noise dampening algorithms the explosion leaves all of them with their ears ringing.

“Agent Sinclair? Sinclair, report in,” says Hand. And then a little quieter. “Check. In.”

“Ma’am,” says the leader of Support Team. “It looked like an RPG. Hit pretty close to Sniper Team’s position, if not directly on it. Should we go and check for--”

“You were ordered to hold your position. Hunker down, stay out of sight. Engage if the hostile patrol approaches the building.”

“Understood.”

“Ma’am,” Agent Sitwell says. He’s reaching a hand slowly toward her. She starts to recoil before she realizes she has a hand on the butt of her sidearm. 

“I’m fine,” she says and crosses her arms in front of her.

The figures of the hostile patrol are visible on the satellite display close in on operations site.

“Ma’am,” says the Agent Hamm, “if the Agent Marshall exits when they’re that close.”

“Take them,” she says.

“Steady, boys.”

The blips on the display move a little closer.

“Now,” says Hamm. A few short machine gun bursts later and the blips are gone. “Hostiles have been eliminated.”

The command room remains silent beyond the occasional cough or chirp from a computer. Victoria Hand is worrying her lower lip when there’s a burst of static over the comm and then she hears Marshall.

“Coming out medium warm. They didn’t want to give up their toys without a little sweet talking. Agent Dhillon was hit but not even bad enough to get a vacation out of the deal.”

“We’ve got you, Marshall,” says Agent Hamm.

Victoria Hand doesn’t say a thing through the short fire fight with the guards who were chasing the Marshall and his team. After the two teams hump it safely to the jeeps, she turns and begins to walk away.

“Ma’am?” asks Sitwell.

“If they encounter any trouble on the way to the border, call me,” she says without slowing.

 

She’s half-flung herself across the bench seat in back of the SHIELD sedan. It’s her usual driver and she didn’t need to give him an address.

“Grace?” she says into her cellphone. “You’re still up? Can...I see you tonight? I can stop for takeout. You have wine? No, I’m fine. I promise. Just another day at the office.”


End file.
